The Star-Spangled
Banner

If there is anything
taken more seriously than the US flag, it's possibly the national anthem.
The Star-spangled Banner accompanies just about every major American function,
and at major sporting events a significant honour is bestowed on those
asked to sing what is probably the best known national anthem in the world.

Listen closely to
the words and it tells of a highly emotional moment in US history when
the war with the British was being fought and of one man's relief in seeing
the US flag still flying after a vicious bombardment.

Before
the Battle
The War of 1812 had been a particularly nasty conflict with the
British. They had burned down the Capitol and the White House in Washington,
and were set on taking the port of Baltimore, which was protected in part
by Fort McHenry, just to the south.

On September 7th,
1814, during the build-up to the attack on Baltimore, two Americans, Colonel
John Skinner and a lawyer and part-time poet by the name of Francis Scott
Key, had gone out to one of the British ships. They had come to negotiate
the release of Dr William Beanes, a friend of Key who had been seized
following the attack on Washington. The British agreed, but all three
had learned too much about the forthcoming attack on Baltimore and so
were detained by the British on board the frigate Surprise until
it was over.

The
Defense of Fort McHenry
The attack started on September 12th, 1814, and after an initial exchange
of fire, the fleet withdrew to form an arc just outside the range of Fort
McHenry's fire.

Skinner, Beanes and
Key watched much of the bombardment from the British deck. The major attack
started in heavy rain on the morning of September 13th. Just under three
miles in the distance the three men caught glimpses of the star-shaped
fort with its huge flag - 42ft long, with 8 red stripes, 7 white stripes
and 15 white stars, and specially commissioned to be big enough that the
British could not possibly fail to see it from a distance.

In the dark of the
night of the 13th, the shelling suddenly stopped. Through the darkness
they couldn't tell whether the British forces had been defeated, or the
fort had fallen.

As the rain cleared,
and the sun began to rise, Key peered through the lifting darkness anxious
to see if the flag they had seen the night before was still flying. And
so it was that he scribbled on the back of an envelope the first lines
of a poem he called Defense of Fort M'Henry:

O,
say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming

As the mist started
to clear he was aware that there was a flag flying - but was it the British
flag? It was difficult to tell:

What
is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

But finally the sun
rose, and with intense relief and pride he saw that the fort had withstood
the onslaught ...

'Tis
the star-spangled banner - O long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

The
poem
Keys, Beanes and Skinner were taken by the British back to shore on Friday,
September 16th. In his room in the Indian Queen Hotel, Keys completed
all four verses of the poem, and the following morning he took it to his
brother-in-law, a local judge, who thought it so good that he arranged
to have it printed as a handbill. Printing was completed by Monday morning,
and the copies were distributed to everyone at the Fort.

Key made a number
of hand-written copies of his original poem, introducing occasional changes
as he did so. But it wasn't just Key that made alterations; various editors
along the way have also had a hand in altering spelling, punctuation and
even the words. The original text of the poem
has therefore varied depending on where you read it.

The
tune It is possible
that Key only ever intended this as a poem; there was nothing in his original
notes to suggest a tune. However, there was a very popular tune of the
time, which Key would have been familiar and for which had been written
many differents sets of words. Perhaps the most notable of these was Robert
Treat Paine's ode, Adams and Liberty, written for the Massachusetts
Charitable Fire Society in 1798. All
these songs had the same very distinctive form and metre, and there can
be no doubt that Key was heavily influenced by it (and may even have had
it in mind).

When the handbills
were printed, they did bear the name of this tune to which the poem should
be sung - To Anacreon In Heaven.
Somewhat ironically, this is a song written for a British drinking club!

The Anacreontic
Society was a popular genetlemen's drinking club, based in a pub in
the Strand, London. The words of the song had been written by the society's
president, Ralph Tomlinson, but the tune is more of a mystery.

At one time, the
English composer Dr Thomas Arnold was thought to be its composer
- Arnold had written numerous songs for the society. However, it is now
accepted that the tune was probably written collectively by a group of
members, led by John Stafford Smith, probably in 1771.

The
poem and tune become an anthemIn
1916, President Woodrow Wilson ordered that it should become the National
Anthem played by the military and naval services, but it wasn't until
March 3rd, 1931 that it was officially designated as the National Anthem
by act of Congress:

Be
it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States
of America in Congress assembled, That the composition known as The Star-spangled
Banner is designated as the National Anthem of the United States of America.

In the third verse
of the poem, Key expresses his particular bitterness towards the British:

Their
blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution
No refuge could save the hireling & slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave

An understandable
feeling of the time, but as the two nations came closer, such sentiments
weren't considered appropriate and as a result this third verse is usually
omitted. A couple of alternative verses have been written in later years,
and these are included on the page containing the
text of the Anthem.

One of the original
copies that Key wrote was sold to the Maryland Historical Society for
$26,400 in 1953. Of the original printed versions, it is believed that
only eleven copies still exist and the only known copy that is in private
hands was sold by Christie's on 3rd December, 2010, for $506,500. The
actual flag that he saw is preserved in the Smithsonian Institution.